"The ambassador in Washington will today write a letter to the Knicks. The Foreign Ministry's political director already tweeted yesterday to draw their attention to this," Kestutis Vaskelevicius, spokesman for Lithuania's foreign minister, said on Monday.

Kuzminskas himself also pointed to the error on Twitter: "Just to clarify to everyone -- I am Lithuanian :) I am sure @ NBA @ nyknicks will fix it," he tweeted.

The New York Knicks have today rectified the error and changed Kuzminskas country to Lithuania.

This is not the first time that a Lithuanian NBA player was said to have been born in the USSR. The sports news website Yahoo Sports in early 2016 changed its info about the birthplace of Houston Rocket's Donatas Motiejunas from the USSR to Lithuania following protests.

"Kaunas, USSR" was listed as Motiejunas' birthplace and was also shown during live NBA broadcasts. The information was corrected after the player himself and Lithuania's ambassador asked the club to do so.